Have you ever noticed, that the simplest things in life appear more complex, once you look a little closer! If you haven’t, try going for a little stroll, and really examining the world of wonder, beneath your feet. You’ll find a surprising array of colours, textures, and shapes, each one more complicated than the next! The world is full of designs, and design principals, but the one I seem to have adopted lately, is what I like to call, “Complicated Simplicity”. As a fairly informal person, I find myself designing, and reaching for simple jewellery pieces, that consist of multiple …

October — cooler evenings, the wonderful colours of leaves, Thanksgiving, pumpkins — and the realization that Christmas and other gift-giving holidays are only two months away! Make your gift-giving easier by making a piece of jewellery for your friends and family! Why not give a gift of a class to someone special – including yourself! We have lots of options and choices in October! Deborah Beesley is showing how to use wire to make jewellery components. Angela Peace is teaching a daytime ‘newbie’ class on Cavandoli knotting. Bonni Poch is taking students to the next level of bead crochet by …

I got hooked on enamelling a few years ago, and I’ve spent a lot of time sharing the techniques, tips and tricks I’ve learned and discovered. But there’s so much more to enamelling and so much left to learn and apply. Beadfx has great classes with the talented Christine Wollacott that cover timeless cloisonne enamelling techniques that include champleve (where you carve or stamp channels into metal and fill them with enamel) and plique a jour, which is like cloisonne but there’s no backing, so the light can shine through the vitreous enamel. It takes skill, talent and patience for …

How do you refer to yourself? (crafter, artisan, artist, other) Recently I was asked to fill out a media profile for a show and this was the first question on the list. It stopped me for a minute. When people ask you what you do, how do you respond? The answer to this question has a lot to do with how long you have been making your craft and how confident you are in your work. Like many others I dabbled all my life with crafts but I would never have used the A word (artist) to describe myself. Oh …

Peacock Scarabaeus by: Lee Metsalo When this series of Swarovskis arrived, we were comparing them to all sorts of things: aurora borealis, beetles, and peacocks made the list. When I saw the ring base, I saw peacock tails – as they move in the sunlight, the blues and greens shimmer and move. As you wear this ring, the crystal sparkle in various shades of blue and green – pretty! I got different opinions of which glue is best for flatbacks, so I’m going to try a few projects with different glues. For this, I used an aging tube of …

Once upon a time, there was a mighty family of beads – The Firepolish Family. These glass beads came in many sizes and shapes, and many, many colours. And, in fact – they still do come in many sizes, shapes, and many, many colours. And life was good. And still is. But then, there came the True 2 mm Firepolish. Because the OLD 2 mm Firepolish was a bit bigger than 2 mms, really. And the new 2 mm firepolish, well it’s more like 2 mm x 1.8 mm. It’s the new, modern lo-cal, diet 2 mm firepolish! And it …

Today, we’re going to chat about the wonderful world of metal bezels! As you can see from the photographs, BeadFX has quite an extensive collection, which is great for aspiring mixed media artists (all that metallic bounty in one place)! I’ll let you in on a secret though; you don’t really need to know anything about mixed media, to use these remarkable products. Bezels are versatile, and suitable for an endless variety of uses. We even carry the popular Susan Lenart Kazmer, Hobnail bezels and the Klick line of interchangeable components. Believe it or not, I haven’t tried everything yet, …

CreativFestival celebrates all things creative – beading and jewellery making; fashion sewing; quilting and surface design; felting and fibre arts; needle arts; knitting and crochet; crafting and paper arts and so much more! BeadFX is proud to be a part of this wonderful show. You’ll find us in booth #927. We will have a wide selection of beads, findings, wire, fibre plus and much more to fill our large 20′ x 20′ aisle end booth. Please note that the show now runs Thursday to Saturday and this year will be in the North Building of the MTCC. In addition to …